seattlepi.com: Top Headlines From the Associated Press

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi moved quickly toward a legal confrontation over the nation's most restrictive abortion law Monday.
Within six hours, the governor signed a bill banning most abortions after 15 weeks of gestation, the state's lone abortion clinic sued, and a federal judge set a Tuesday morning hearing to consider blocking the restrictions.
Abortion opponents sought the confrontation, hoping federal courts will ultimately prohibit abortions before a fetus is viable. Current federal law blocks such restrictions by states.
Some legal experts have said a change in the law is unlikely unless the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court changes in a way that favors abortion opponents.
Republican Gov.

NEW YORK CITY (AP) — The Weinstein Co. filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday with a buyout offer in hand from a private equity firm, the latest twist in its efforts to survive the sexual misconduct scandal that brought down co-founder Harvey Weinstein, shook Hollywood and triggered a movement that spread out to convulse other industries.
The company also announced it was releasing any victims of or witnesses to Weinstein's alleged misconduct from non-disclosure agreements preventing them from speaking out. That step had long been sought by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who filed a lawsuit against the company last month on behalf of its employees.
The Weinstein Co.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The hunt for the serial bomber who has been leaving deadly explosives in packages on Austin doorsteps took a new, more sinister turn Monday when investigators said the fourth and latest blast was triggered along a street by a nearly invisible tripwire.
Police and federal agents said that suggests a "higher level of sophistication" than they have seen before, and means the carnage is now random, rather than targeted at someone in particular. Underscoring that point, a relative says the most-recent explosion left what appeared to be nails stuck in his grandson's knees.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Battles over priorities in a huge government-wide spending bill are essentially settled, leaving a scaled-back plan for President Donald Trump's border wall and a huge rail project that pits Trump against Capitol Hill's most powerful Democrat as the top issues to be solved.
An agreement could be announced as early as Tuesday.
Efforts to tackle politically-charged immigration issues and rapidly rising health insurance premiums appeared to be faltering.
Capitol Hill Democrats rejected a White House bid to extend protections for so-called Dreamer immigrants in exchange for $25 billion in funding for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Democrats appeared likely to yield on $1.

NEW YORK (AP) — Facebook "likes" can tell a lot about a person. Maybe even enough to fuel a voter-manipulation effort like the one a Trump-affiliated data-mining firm stands accused of — and which Facebook may have enabled.
The social network is under fire after The New York Times and The Guardian newspaper reported that former Trump campaign consultant Cambridge Analytica used data, including user likes, inappropriately obtained from roughly 50 million Facebook users to try to influence elections.
Monday was a wild roller coaster ride for Facebook, whose shares plunged 7 percent in its worst one-day decline since 2014. Officials in the EU and the U.S.

A self-driving Uber SUV struck and killed a pedestrian in suburban Phoenix in the first death involving a fully autonomous test vehicle — a crash that could have far-reaching consequences for the new technology.
The fatality Sunday night in Tempe was the event many in the auto and technology industries were dreading but knew was inevitable.
Uber immediately suspended all road-testing of such autos in the Phoenix area, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto. The testing has been going on for months as automakers and technology companies like the ride-hailing service compete to be the first with cars that operate on their own.

WASHINGTON (AP) — More Republicans are telling President Donald Trump in ever blunter terms to lay off his escalating criticism of special counsel Robert Mueller and the Russia probe. But party leaders are taking no action to protect Mueller, embracing a familiar strategy with the president — simply waiting out the storm.
Trump blistered Mueller and his investigation all weekend on Twitter and started in again Monday, questioning the probe's legitimacy with language no recent president has used for a federal inquiry. "A total WITCH HUNT with massive conflicts of interest!" Trump tweeted.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Under a patchwork shelter of overlapping tarps and repurposed vinyl advertisements, several dozen residents of 18 Independence Street pack cheek by jowl into donated tents in the street near their building, which was damaged in the Sept. 19 earthquake.
Six months after the temblor, improvised camps like this one erected by displaced residents are among the most visible signs that not everyone has moved on from the earthquake that killed 228 people in Mexico City and 141 more elsewhere.
Mexico City Reconstruction Commissioner Edgar Oswaldo Tungui Rodriguez said there are 27 such camps around the capital, but denied that people were living in any of them.

BEIRUT (AP) — The Latest on the conflict in Syria (all times local):
1 a.m.
Eight Security Council nations say it's "imperative" that the U.N. body "immediately pursue decisive action" to achieve a cease-fire in Syria if U.N. member states, especially Russia and its ally Syria, don't implement a resolution demanding a cessation of hostilities.
A letter sent to all 15 council members on Monday expresses "profound concern" about the lack of implementation of the Feb. 24 resolution demanding a cease-fire throughout Syria without delay to deliver humanitarian aid and evacuate the critically ill and wounded.
It singles out Russia and Syria as key to implementation.

NEW YORK (AP) — A New York City council member launched an investigation Monday into the Kushner Cos.' routine filing of paperwork falsely claiming zero rent-regulated tenants in its buildings, saying that the deception should have been uncovered long ago because the documents are online for all to see.
Councilman Ritchie Torres said the city's buildings department should have spotted the wrong numbers because they were contradicted by tax documents filed with another city agency.
"The scandal is not only the deception of Kushner Cos., the scandal is the dysfunction of the city bureaucracy," said Torres, chair of the city council's investigations committee. "The right hand of city government didn't know what the left hand was doing.